Number 251 - April 2004

eBay Questions & Answers
By Pamela Tabak, Boca Raton Comptr Soc., Inc. Jan 04
There are 27,000 categories and millions of items for sale on eBay every day, but don't worry about competition. They all have the same chance to sell, especially if you make your Web page look professional. All you need to do is RESEARCH your item to get an idea of price and the way it should be described. Then make an attractive page with a picture of your item and promote it as if you were selling it in person.    Here are questions and answers from the Boca Raton Computer Society's September general meeting Q & A session about buying and selling items on eBay:    Q. Where do I find "Buy It Now" Items?    A. On the "Buy It Now" tab at the head of any eBay search page. Search your item, then select the "Buy It Now" tab at the head of the search page. All "Buy It Now" items will be listed. You can sort them by items "ending first", "newly listed", "lowest price", or "highest price~~". The latter is useful when researching an item that you wish to sell.    Q. How do I Edit or Change My Listing?    A. The information you can edit depends upon the time you have left before your listing ends and whether your item has had bids or purchases. If your Item has received no bids or purchases and does not end within 12 hours, you can revise anything in your listing except the selling format (for example, you can't change your auction-style listing to a fixed price listing). If your item has received a bid, a purchase, or ends within 12 hours, you can only add to the item description or add a second category. (Exception: If your listing has a bid and ends within 12 hours, you can't add to your description or add a second category .)    Add optional seller features to increase your item's visibility. To change or add information or upgrade your listing to attract more buyers, you can go to the REVISE YOUR ITEM PAGE.    Q. What if I can't reach my buyer?    A. Request Your Buyer's Contact Information. Like you, buyers sometimes have emergencies, illnesses, or computer problems. Check your buyer's feedback to see what other trading partners have said. If your buyer has mostly positive feedback with little or no mention of problems, be patient. Your buyer may not be able to respond to you right away for legitimate reasons. If you don't get an email response, you can request your buyer's phone number. Sometimes a phone call helps make communication easier.    If your item was a regular listing that ended without a reserve price or a Reserve Price Auction where the reserve is met and you are unable to contact your winning buyer, your listing may fall under eBay's Non-Paying Buyer Policy. This policy will tell you how to request a fee credit from eBay if your buyer does not pay.    If your listing is a Reserve Price Auction and the reserve is not met, the transaction is not considered successful. Offering to sell an item directly to bidders when the reserve was not met is against eBay rules and is also called fee avoidance.    If your attempts to reach your buyer fail and you're unable to complete the transaction, consider making a "Second Chance Offer" If you have requested your buyer's contact information and it is invalid, you may contact eBay with the information.    Q. How do I know if my seller or buyer is reliable?    A. The best way to find out if your buyer or seller is reliable is to Check their Feedback: Get to know your seller-before you buy. eBay's feedback system gives you confidence to purchase items from past comments from buyers and view feedback details.    It is important to review a seller's feedback details, not just look at the feedback rating number. The details will show the types of experiences other buyers have had with the seller. View a seller's feedback by visiting the view feedback request form. Or, when you see a seller's User ID, such as "Makeadeal (125)", click the number to go straight to the seller's feedback page.	When to check it    Before you bid on an item, you can check the seller's feedback rating by clicking on the number next to their name, or from the view feedback request form. Sellers may also want to view the feedback profiles of bidders to see how reliable they've been in the past. How to leave it    After you make a sale or purchase, remember to leave feedback for the eBay member with whom you dealt. This helps everyone in the community to know what it's like to deal with that member. Notes    Feedback cannot be erased. The feedback you give or receive is permanent, so be sure to make only fair and factual comments.    Q. If I have many of the same item for sale, how are they listed?    A. They will be listed and sold as a "Multiple Item Auction" or "Dutch Auction." When you see that a seller has listed a quantity of two or more identical items for sale on an eBay auction, that's a Multiple Item Auction (Dutch Auction). Unlike a regular eBay auction, Multiple Item Auctions can have many winners. When you bid on a Multiple Item Auction, you specify the number of items you're interested in and the price you're willing to pay. All winning bidders will pay the same price: the lowest successful bid. Much of the time, all buyers pay the starting price in Multiple Item Auctions. However, if there are more bids than items, the items will go to the earliest successful bids.    To beat another bid, yours must have a higher total bid value (bid price x number of items bid on) than other bids. Reducing this total bid value in subsequent bids is not permitted.    Successful bids are displayed when you click on the link reading, "see winning bidders list" link. The complete bidding history (including any unsuccessful bids) is displayed when you click on the "bid history" link.    You have the right to refuse partial quantities. This means that if you bid for 10 items and are offered only eight when the auction ends, you don't have to buy any of them.    Q. What is Proxy Bidding?    A. Enter your maximum, then sit back and watch! eBay uses a helpful bidding system (called Proxy Bidding) to make bidding on auctions more convenient and less time-consuming for buyers. Here's how it works:    1. When you place a bid, you enter the maximum amount you'd be willing to pay for the item. Your maximum amount is kept confidential from other bidders and the seller.    2. The eBay system compares your bid to those of the other bidders.    3. The system places bids on your behalf, using only as much of your bid as is necessary to maintain your high bid position (or to meet the reserve price). The system will bid up to your maximum amount.    4. If another bidder has a higher maximum, you'll be outbid. BUT, if no other bidder has a higher maximum, you win the item. And you could pay significantly less than your maximum price! This means you don't have to keep coming back to re-bid every time another bid is placed. Notes    a. This bidding system does not apply to Multiple Item Auctions (Dutch Auctions).    b. In Reserve Price Auctions, if your maximum bid is the first to be greater than the seller's reserve price, the eBay system will automatically jump the price up to meet the reserve, and bidding will continue from there.    Reproduced from the October 2003 issue of Boca Bits, the monthly magazine of The Boca Raton Computer Society, Inc. (BRCS). Pamela Tabak fields questions about Buying & Selling on eBay prior to BRCS' monthly meetings and publishes answers to questions e-mailed to her in a Boca Bits column every month. She provides additional pointers at http://personal.atl.bellsouth.net/e/p/eptusa/EbayInformation.htm.
Number 251 - April 2004